The Leadership Lesson Ed Sheeran Never Meant to Teach Us

Power depends on fear. This week, millions of people reminded us what happens when fear stops working.

For the past 24 hours, I have been glued to my phone. And I mean glued.

Every time I open Instagram there is another video. Then another. Not simply from activists or people I follow, but from complete strangers I have never seen before. Reddit is exploding. The story is everywhere. Yesterday I had never heard of Aaron Rowe. Today I am a fan. I discovered Beoga and have been listening to them while I work. They are brilliant. I also discovered that Lukas Graham are behind a song I have loved for years without ever knowing who they were.

At some point yesterday I realised why I couldn’t stop watching.

This isn’t celebrity gossip. I am watching an attempt by extremely powerful people to control a conversation spectacularly backfire.

As someone who has spent most of my professional life working around leadership, courage, values and human behaviour, I wanted to join that conversation. Because beneath the musicians, stadiums and social media chaos is one of the clearest demonstrations of power and leadership I have seen in a long time.

And, unexpectedly, one of the most hopeful.

Macklemore has been speaking about Palestine consistently for years. Not when it became convenient. Not when everybody else was doing it. When much of his industry was silent, he spoke. He marched. He released Hind’s Hall. He donated. He kept using his platform even when there were very obvious reasons, professionally, to shut up.

And his message at Ed Sheeran’s concerts was bigger than the two words that dominated the headlines.

Yes, Free Palestine.

But also freedom for Sudan. Freedom for Congo. Freedom for people suffering everywhere. He spoke about children, peace, dignity, justice and a world in which people should hear the sound of playgrounds rather than bombs.

Somehow, that became the scandal.

Macklemore VS Sheeran

P!nk helped make it one, framing Macklemore’s words around Jewish fear and safety. Antisemitism is real and should be confronted unequivocally. But Palestinian freedom is not Jewish oppression. Asking for Palestinian children to stop being killed is not antisemitism. Criticising a state is not hatred of a people.

And if this really is about antisemitism, then somebody needs to explain the Kanye West problem.

Ye has spent years making explicitly antisemitic statements, yet major American stadiums have continued to accommodate him. Raymond James Stadium hosted him twice this year. But Macklemore saying Free Palestine makes him too dangerous for stadiums?

That isn’t a consistent standard against antisemitism.

It looks a lot more like a standard about which speech powerful people are prepared to tolerate.

And that brings me to Robert Kraft.

A billionaire whose company owns Gillette Stadium reportedly decides Macklemore is unacceptable. Macklemore says Kraft helped rally other stadium owners. Suddenly one of the biggest tours in the world is facing an ultimatum: lose Macklemore or lose venues.

Think about how extraordinary that is.

A handful of extraordinarily wealthy people control enough infrastructure that they can effectively determine who gets to stand on somebody else’s stage.

And Kraft is an especially uncomfortable person from whom to receive a lecture on acceptable morality. In 2019 he was charged with soliciting prostitution at a Florida massage parlour. The case was eventually dropped after surveillance evidence was suppressed. His lawyer, Jack Goldberger, had previously represented Jeffrey Epstein, and records released this year show Epstein discussing Kraft’s case and trying to get Goldberger hired.

This is what I mean by the Epstein class. A tiny, extraordinarily wealthy and connected world with access to money, lawyers, institutions and influence most people could never dream of possessing, increasingly behaving as though economic power gives them the right to dictate the boundaries of everybody else’s speech.

And then came Ed Sheeran’s leadership test.

Macklemore wasn’t a stranger. They had been friends for 13 years. Sheeran is also not a powerless musician terrified about paying next month’s rent. His fortune is estimated in the hundreds of millions. 410 GBP millions to be precise.

He had power.

He had options.

He had a choice.

He could have said: If my friend isn’t welcome, neither am I.

He could have found another venue. He could have cancelled. He could have put the extraordinary commercial power of Ed fucking Sheeran behind his friend and forced the billionaires to decide how badly they really wanted this fight.

Instead, Macklemore went.

Then came the absolutely LAME statement. Promoters. Venues. Livelihoods. Unity. Difficult conversations. A bunch of lies.... Explanations about where the final decision technically sat.

I read it.

I call it COWARDICE.

And this is where the story becomes a leadership story.

Because leadership is not about what you say when courage is free.

Everybody loves values when values cost nothing. Integrity. Authenticity. Courage. Purpose. We put them on websites, company walls and LinkedIn profiles.

The test comes when somebody sends you the bill.

Ed Sheeran was sent his.

He chose the Epstein class.

Then someone with a fraction of Sheeran’s money, fame and power showed us what the alternative looked like.

Aaron Rowe walked away.

This matters enormously to me. Supporting one of the biggest artists in the world was a huge career opportunity for him. He publicly acknowledged what Sheeran had done for him. He had far more to lose relative to where he was in his career than Ed Sheeran did.

And he walked anyway.

Then Beoga walked. Sheeran’s band and collaborators of more than a decade.

Then the wonderful FINNEAS.

Then Lukas Graham.

BIIRD had already completed their dates and still publicly stood behind Macklemore.

That is when the entire power play began collapsing.

The original message was supposed to be:

Look what happens when you speak.

Instead, artists started answering:

Then take me off too.

And the public did something equally important. We rewarded them!!!!!!

Macklemore’s following exploded. I watched his Instagram account move from 7 million to 7.7 million followers in less than 24 hours. His music surged. Hind’s Hall, the song at the centre of his Palestine advocacy, climbed the charts. Its number one in several charts.

Aaron Rowe gained tens of thousands of followers. I was one of them.

I discovered Beoga because they stood up. Currently listening to them.

Millions of videos, comments and posts began sending the next artist contemplating whether to speak a completely different message:

You might not be alone.

That is the part I think we underestimate.

Fear is contagious.

But courage is too.

Macklemore himself explained it beautifully: when people see others using their platforms against injustice and realise there may be less to fear than they thought, that courage can translate into advocacy and action.

And then yesterday I heard creator Lenny Boy say one sentence that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about:

“The world doesn’t need entertainers right now. It needs warriors.”

Exactly.

We have enough entertainers.

We have enough celebrities who care deeply about justice until justice threatens the sponsorship.

Enough corporations with values until the values affect revenue.

Enough leaders who believe in courage until courage becomes personally inconvenient.

What we desperately need are people prepared to risk something.

And that is why these last 24 hours have made me feel something I have struggled to feel for a long time.

Hope.

Not because Ed Sheeran is being dragged across the internet (which yes, I am loving because I am that petty...). Not because Macklemore gained followers. Not because a tour descended into chaos.

Because I watched the machinery of fear fail!!!!

A billionaire exercised his power.

An enormously wealthy artist capitulated.

The person being punished refused to apologise.

Another artist stood beside him.

Then another.

Then another.

Then millions of ordinary people started rewarding courage instead of merely complaining about cowardice.

The attempt to silence Macklemore gave his message a larger audience.

The attempt to frighten artists gave them something to rally against.

The attempt to control the conversation became the conversation.

That is people power.

And perhaps that is the leadership lesson Ed Sheeran never meant to teach us.

Power can own stadiums. It can control contracts. It can make courage expensive.

But its greatest weapon has always been convincing us that resisting it will leave us isolated.

This week, people looked around and realised they weren’t alone.

And once people stop being afraid of standing alone, something changes.

The powerful still have their billions.

They still have their stadiums.

They still have their influence.

But they no longer have our fear.

And when enough people say enough, that is when power begins to shift.

That is leadership.

That is collective courage.

And after the last few years, watching it happen has given me something I desperately needed:

hope.